Chapter 134 His Unexpected Past [Light]

My earliest memory was a white room.

I remembered the hum of fluorescent lights overhead. It was constant and sterile, like the breath of the walls themselves. The floor was smooth, cold, and spotless, no matter how much blood I left on it. I was made to kill a lot of people there. That was all that place wanted of me… to fight, to bleed, and to win.

The faces blurred together over time. Some were boys, some were girls. All of us had numbers instead of names. I was Subject U-731. I never learned what the U stood for. Maybe “Unstable.” Maybe “Useful.”

Every day began with hunger. My lips cracked from thirst, my stomach constantly clawing itself from the inside. They kept us starving, they said, “to hone the instinct.” I think it was really just to make us animals.

One of my opponents that left an impression on me was a man they called the Cannibal. A full-grown adult with a body covered in bite scars and eyes too wild to belong to a human. I was twelve back then. I almost died that day because he was fed before the fight, and I wasn’t. He tore chunks out of my shoulder before I electrocuted him to death using a spark I didn’t even know I could make.

After that, I made a decision.

If eating corpses kept me alive, I would eat them, too.

I didn’t care if it made me a monster. I had already accepted that label the first time I felt joy in surviving.

As time went on, something inside me changed.

My body began to hum with energy, a constant thrum under my skin. I discovered I could generate electricity and apply it to my speed. They were small shocks at first, then bolts strong enough to burn through bone, and slowly, a fuel to my speed. The evolution of my electrokinesis came not from training, but from necessity. Every fight forced me to evolve. Every scar was a lesson.

They called it stimulation-induced power development.

I called it pain.

Once, they threw me against a man who could phase through everything, an intangibility-class cape. I remember the smug look on his face, like he thought he’d already won. He laughed as my hands passed through him harmlessly. But I noticed something for the briefest instant when he struck, he had to solidify.

That was all I needed.

I baited him into lunging for my throat, then charged myself with all the power I could muster. When he phased through my chest, I let him, and then detonated lightning inside his body.

His scream was the most human sound I’d ever heard in that room.

Years passed. My victories became routine. My meals became cleaner. My hands were steadier. I was granted water, vitamins, and even cooked meat sometimes. They said it was to keep me “in fighting shape.” I knew better. I was a weapon they were polishing.

They started putting me in strange rooms, ones that weren’t white anymore, filled with moving colors and voices that weren’t real. The handlers used psychic capes to talk directly into my mind, to show me images of loyalty, obedience, and patriotism. They wanted to make me their perfect soldier.

But I learned something else instead.

Every session made me stronger against them. Their brainwashing worked on the first day. A little less than the second. By the third, I could resist the mental push entirely. They didn’t know that. Still, I played along.

Finally, came my next evolution.

The lightning no longer burned just outside my skin. Instead, it became me. I learned to shed flesh and become light itself, a current of pure energy that could pass through walls, air, even bullets.

The scientists called it “hybrid shifter-intangibility manifestation.”

I called it freedom.

But I never got to leave that room, not until one day when the voice from the intercom said something new.

“Subject U-731. You have completed the program.”

I didn’t move. I didn’t know what to feel.

“As a reward for your efforts,” the voice continued, “you are to be granted full citizenship under the National Supremacy Directorate. Congratulations, soldier. You are now human.”

When I came to the world ruled by civilization, I didn’t know what to do. Everything outside the White Room felt wrong. It was too bright, too loud, and too full of pointless emotion. The National Supremacy Directorate gave me a name, a wife, and a military rank. They called it “reintegration.”

I didn’t know what to do with a military rank, but I could still vividly remember my first time receiving the affectionate touch of a woman. It began almost tenderly. She was assigned to me as a reward, told that I’d earned “companionship.” I didn’t understand what love meant, but I understood how to claim what I was given.

At first, she tried to meet me halfway, whispering that we could “take things slow.” I didn’t know what that meant either. When she hesitated, I mistook her trembling for an invitation. The sounds that followed weren’t the ones I’d expected.

“Please… stop, you’re hurting me,” she gasped as I pinned her naked body under me.

Her voice was a blur of fear and breath and sobbing, something I couldn’t quite process. My body knew motion and force, not gentleness. When it was over, she wouldn’t look at me. Her shoulders shook beneath the bruises I’d left there, and I realized how breakable she was.

I stopped touching her after that. It wasn’t guilt that made me stop. Instead, it was disgust. The bruises swelled in places that made her ugly to my eyes, and the pleading in her gaze ruined what little pleasure there had been. I told myself I preferred silence.

They sent psychiatrists next. They asked the same questions in different ways, tested my reaction to empathy, guilt, and affection. I learned how to pass their evaluations by memorizing their cues. I told them what they wanted to hear because I needed the allowance, the apartment, and the food rations.

Civilization bored me more than I ever expected. At least in the White Room, there was purpose: survive, adapt, and win. Out here, there was only waiting.

That changed when I met others, people who had also come from the White Room. They recognized something in me, and I in them. We didn’t talk about what we’d done there, but the silence between us said enough. I felt a kind of connection with them. Maybe this was what the Directorate meant by camaraderie.

We were gathered one morning for an orientation. Rows of steel chairs, white walls, and fluorescent light overhead. A high-ranking general entered, medals clinking faintly as he moved. “Sit down,” he said. “Let’s cut to the chase.”

An aide wheeled in a projector, setting it beside the lectern.

“Children of the White Room,” he began, his tone reverent, “you were not brought here as merely soldiers, but as saviors. You were the instruments forged in fire and precision for a single purpose… war.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd. Some of them straightened their backs even more, eager and proud. Others, like me, simply listened.

“The world has enjoyed peace for decades,” the general continued. “Peace purchased by the blood and genius of the Third Reich, when it ended the Great War and unified the planet under the Directorate’s banner. You live in the golden age our ancestors dreamed of.”

He paused, and his gloved hand struck the podium with a heavy thud. “But peace breeds weakness. Complacency. You know this better than anyone. The White Room was not built to preserve peace. It was built to forge the kind of patriots who can conquer beyond it.”

I frowned. Conquer? What was left to conquer? The Directorate already ruled every continent, every ocean, every sky. Even the stars had their satellites carrying the emblem of the black sun.

The general’s eyes swept over us. “The White Room, as you knew it, was the Genesis Protocol of the Directorate’s Super Soldier Initiative. You were the test… the first and finest breed of human weaponry. Not mere soldiers, but the living proof of our supremacy. You were made to secure the empire’s eternal dominion.”

A young man two seats to my left raised his fist. “For the Directorate!” he shouted.

“For the Directorate!” others echoed in near-unison, their voices fervent and mechanical. The sound filled the hall like the droning of a hive.

The general allowed their chanting to subside before he smiled with a tight and confident expression. “The time has come for you to fulfill your true purpose. The Directorate’s dominion must extend not only across the Earth, but beyond reality itself.”

He gestured toward the aide beside him. The man dimmed the lights and powered on a projector. A holographic sphere flared to life, swirling with shimmering dimensions that bled into one another, like bubbles touching and overlapping.

“This,” said the general, “is the multiverse. Countless worlds, countless realities, all existing alongside our own. Some primitive. Some advanced. Some ruled by monsters… and others by gods. We have found the means to cross between them.”

The air felt heavy. The hum of the machine filled the silence.

The general’s eyes glowed faintly beneath the light of the projection. “The Directorate will be the first to colonize eternity. You, our White Room survivors, will be its vanguard. You will carry the banner of humanity to every world that dares to exist beyond ours.”

A war beyond the world itself…

It was an interesting topic, one that made the others twitch with excitement like dogs waiting for a bone. I covered my mouth, suppressing the grin that tried to stretch across my face. Honestly, I didn’t care much for the ideology of the Third Reich. All that “purity” talk and patriotic preaching bored me. What I cared about were the benefits… luxury quarters, food that wasn’t synthetic, and the sort of privileges that came only when you were a prized experiment that didn’t die in the White Room.

Especially if you were my skin color.

A few people got uneasy when they saw my eyes, since they were too narrow. But that was fine. I could tolerate it. Well… It’s just eyes, I thought.

Admittedly, I’d gouged a few people’s eyes before for looking at me the wrong way. It always felt easier to make them stop staring that way.

When the orientation ended, most filed out chanting the Directorate’s slogans. I lingered, watching the general as aides packed up the projector. His uniform gleamed under the light, every medal polished to perfection. I stepped forward.

“General,” I called, my tone measured. “A question, if you don’t mind.”

He turned to me, his left eye glinting faintly red for a moment. It was a mechanical implant, perhaps. “Go ahead, Captain.”

“I want to know who’s behind the Super Soldier project,” I said. “Who created us? Who kept us alive?”

The general’s face hardened. “That information is classified.” He paused, then added, “But since it’s public knowledge to a degree, I can tell you this much… the head researcher was known as the Witch.”

“The Witch…” I repeated, tasting the name. “Is that a title, or…?”

“She was one of the Directorate’s Prime-class psychics,” he said. “A woman with a telepathic range vast enough to monitor entire city sectors. She handled the conditioning of White Room subjects, your batch included.”

The Witch… I’d heard of her before. An existence whispered about, equal parts myth and terror. She was said to rewrite thoughts like code, sculpting minds into perfect loyalty.

“One more thing,” I said, leaning in slightly. “Can I meet my parents?”

That made him blink. “Your… parents?”

“Yes. Biological or surrogate, whichever exists on paper. I’ve lived my whole life without knowing who they are. I want to see them.”

He studied me for a long while, then nodded slowly. “I see no harm in that. I’ll have the administrative bureau handle the paperwork. You’ll receive whatever files exist regarding your origin and, if applicable, a visitation permit.”

I grinned. “Thank you, General.”

He waved off the gratitude. “Superhumans like you are the Directorate’s treasures. You’ve earned your comfort.”

Superhumans were revered in the Third Reich, treated as living gods, and walking symbols of power and divinity. But there were limits to that reverence. We couldn’t hold office or sit in the Assembly. Command positions were capped at the field level. Above that, everything belonged to the “mundanes.” It was part of the balance, or so they said. The generals were always human, always surrounded by psychic bodyguards rotating in shifts like interchangeable tools.

As I turned to leave, I heard a faint metallic click behind me. The general pressed his temple, his left eye glowing briefly again as if something inside it was adjusting.

“You’ll receive what you requested by this afternoon,” he said, voice sharper now, resonating slightly metallic. “And Captain… remember, your loyalty ensures your future.”

I gave him a lazy salute. “Wouldn’t dream of disappointing the Directorate.”

Later that afternoon, I lay on my bed, a thin envelope resting on my chest. The Directorate’s insignia was stamped cleanly on the front, Subject U-731: Personal File. I tore it open and spread the papers across the sheets. There wasn’t much to read.

Just fragments and redactions everywhere. Whole sentences struck out with thick black bars.

Still, what little I saw was fascinating.

Apparently, my mother had been a resistance fighter, chosen because of her lineage. She descended from a powerful electrokinetic who had once caused the Third Reich no small amount of trouble. It amused me that they would breed power from their enemies’ bloodlines.

But the next page was what caught my attention.

She’d been impregnated artificially. Intrauterine insemination.

So whose seed was used?

The document named him: “The Mourner.” He was a dangerous cape from another world. That made me laugh softly. I read on. It said the Mourner’s power was “unstable, catastrophic, and emotive in nature.” The Directorate had recovered only fragments of his DNA after an interdimensional incursion. Even the Third Reich at the height of its empire, considered his world too dangerous to invade.

“Hmmm…” I muttered, leaning back. “So, no visitation permit after all. Mother dead, father from another world. That makes me… what, a bastard between dimensions?”

I smirked. The thought was strangely comforting.

I pushed the file aside and opened another, one I’d quietly stolen from the orientation hall. The Super Soldier Project dossier.

Now this was something to read. Eugenics on an industrial scale. Prisoners promised pardons. High-ranking capes volunteer out of boredom or greed. Even officers were gambling away their freedom to science. The logic was simple: combine the strongest bloodlines, erase weakness, and make gods in human form.

But what truly drew my attention was The Witch’s section.

I read about her work for hours, flipping through yellowed photographs and medical reports. Some pages made my stomach twist, not out of disgust, but wonder.

The sheer, unadulterated brutality was breathtaking.

One involved grafting animal organs onto living human subjects, another meticulously dissecting supehuman abilities to isolate the source. Children were wired into psychic circuits until their minds burned. Infants exposed to radiation storms to test “evolutionary response.” Telepaths made to rewrite each other’s memories until only static remained. And one experiment where a woman was forced to believe her own limbs were missing until she died of shock, while the Witch observed her neural readings with fascination.

It was beautifully cruel. Even artful, in a way.

Most would’ve turned away in horror. I found myself chuckling.

“And here I thought I was insane…”

As the afternoon wore on, my eyelids grew heavy. I tossed the files aside, letting my mind wander to the impending war. Tomorrow, I will deploy, but for now, I will focus on my own pleasure.

The sound of sheets rustling caught my attention as a woman emerged from beneath the covers, her lips meeting mine in a passionate kiss. Another woman continued to stroke and tease my length beneath the sheets, her skilled touch bringing me close to the edge. I worked up a sweat that night, my mind preoccupied with the morrow's deployment.

…

..

.

And tomorrow did come.

The portal was a shimmering ring of light anchored by massive pylons.

My comrades stood lined in formation, each wearing the Directorate’s sigil on their sleeves.

The general’s voice echoed across the hangar: “Today, you step beyond our world. Beyond our dominion. Carry the will of the Third Reich into the multiverse!”

The men roared their affirmation. I said nothing.

I adjusted the band on my arm, the red cloth tight against my sleeve, the black swastika stark under the lights. As the vortex opened wider, the air crackled with energy.

I grinned. Finally, something new.

“No more boredom…”

Unfortunately, it didn’t go the way we expected.